Happy 4th! (with bonus rant)

My latest discovery, which I will share, is that everything is ridiculously complicated and costs too damn much.

In my youth, life was simple (although frequently unhappy). My mom did many things herself, but now these projects are out of reach. Take knitting and crocheting and sewing, forex. Loading up on the supplies costs a fortune and the patterns are complicated, wah. Don’t even get me started on scrapbooking (again) or making bead jewelry. Soooo costly! Plus, in my case, I’d have to take classes first, for jewelry, sewing, cooking, etc. I’m not one who can watch a video for twenty minutes and then go mmhmm now I see how to construct a tiny house, easy peasy!

I remember we usually had an aquarium going on. My mom dealt with it, but it could not have been outrageously expensive because we weren’t wealthy and we lived in small apartments for many years. The aquariums were really pretty, but the fish died often, and we were always traipsing off to the pet store for little baggies of new ones. I bet now though aquariums are just another one of those crazy costly and super complex hobbity bobbity things.

I liked watching the bright little neons dart through the water after their specks of food. We had graceful black and white stripey fish and some goldfish varieties too. A few catfish at the bottom keeping things clean. Mom always indulged me and got a teeny pirate treasure chest for decoration in the sand. Haven’t thought about our aquariums for years…

Ah yes, the sands of time, rushing so fast through the hourglass now, piling up at the bottom, waiting to meet that last big wave that will wash them out to the eternal ocean and then… and then what?

Nothing.

*

You know, I feel I’m pretty chill with anyone who comments here unless they’re an obvious spammer or troll. If you’re of a different political persuasion, cool, just keep it civil and don’t insult other peeps or me. I have accepted loads of criticism and disagreements over the years. Don’t mind it at all, and I particularly welcome any comments on my poetry and fiction. I am not thrilled with advice I haven’t solicited, especially about health, but whatever.

But that’s not the case elsewhere. Some bloggers don’t want any disagreement or difference of opinion. I’ve noticed I will be condescended to or explained at if I dare to express a thought contrary to the OP’s. That is unpleasant, FYI, and I will not be visiting these blogs much or at all in the future.

YHBW. 🙂

Have a great weekend! ☄️💥🔥

Oopsy

Some of you may have seen a 3TC slip through the fabric of time and appear at 10AM today instead of 10PM. That was not some sort of weird bend in the universe, but human error… mine. This should put to rest those pesky rumors that I am a bot, since a bot would not screw up. I suppose a bot could be programmed to screw up to seem more human-like however. Ooh.

In any case, I rescheduled the stray post to return tonight as it should, so if you’re one of those suck-ups who do homework in advance to get brownie points, the link is not going to work until later. You can preen though at the thought of having your 3TC finished before others and then run off to do something productive. Oh, who are we kidding, right? You’ll be glued to your screen as usual, waiting for your next hit of posts.

Probably for the best. At least we’re safe in Blogland surrounded by supportive folks and not in the scary wilds of Usenet or FB or some other mean place. Yikes!

Another Award! 🤩

A big bouquet 💐 of thanks goes out to Tanya of Salted Caramel for nominating me for this award! Very lovely of her to think of me. I enjoy her blog as well.💖

Now I’m to talk about how my blog began. As I’ve mentioned, this isn’t my first blog; that one started way back in 2003 or so, simply because other writers had one. Yep, I’m a follower, not a leader. My posts were snarky and intended to start arguments in order to generate traffic, which they did, but it was still low compared to the hot blogs at the time. Back then, I was obsessed with stats.

But I got hoisted by my own petard, as they say. (Do they actually say that? And what is a petard anyway?) Long story short, I ended up in an huge kerfuffle over pit bulls, of all things, and my comments got hacked… it was quite a mess.

I don’t like mess. What I generally do when things get messy, ugly, yucky, or in any way unpleasant, is GTFO. And Ultrablog was no exception. I archived and deleted it.

A while later, I began a second blog. This one was incredibly boring. Deliberately so. I posted only about cats, cupcakes, and shoes ~ in fact, that was the name of the blog. But I did have a private one where I posted more personal things and invited selected readers whom I trusted.

After my mom died, the private blog had pretty much served its purpose, and I was bored with CC&S. So, I began Light Motifs on Blogger. I held the WordPress address just in case… and then it turned out I wanted to switch over in 2009 due to some annoyances with Blogger.

Back then, I posted infrequently compared to now, maybe a few times per week. I’d post song lyrics and other people’s poetry, book reviews and excerpts, etc. It was all regarding my emotional state at the time, which was a mix of hope and despair over a romance. After that ended and I went onto dating sites, this blog became a pit of bitching about that. I went through several cycles of deleting those posts, which is why the years between 2012-2017 have giant gaps in them.

Since I’ve quit dating and facebooking, I’ve not deleted any posts here. I’m more mindful of what I write in the first place, which is my first piece of advice to new bloggers (we’re supposed to give two bits of advice in this award post). Even if you don’t have many followers yet, try to keep in mind that your posts are public and envision an audience when you write. Make each post the best it can be, and give something of yourself to your audience, whether it’s a personal anecdote or an original creative writing or photo. Don’t just link to another site without comment. That’s no fun. 😢

And for heaven’s sake, never mention pit bulls! 😱🐶🤯

I’ll stop here because I don’t like to tag people for awards. I hereby nominate all my recent commenters for this one ~ you’re recognized! Grab the award and make a post. G’wan… don’t be shy! 😀

Just Noticed This…

Yeah, yeah, it includes Twitter, so…

But still! 😀🎉💖👍🏻🎶

Surprised by Stats

As I’ve said, I don’t obsess over stats, here or on Twitter. If I did, I’d drive myself (more) bonkers. But I do find certain things peculiar.

Forex, I’ve been steadily and slowly gaining blog followers, which is nice (waves to new peeps, who probably aren’t reading), but yet my views have decreased. Is that not odd? I find that odd. More followers should mean more views, one would think. Luckily, I do not monetize my blog, so I won’t be losing any advertising pennies over this. Hurrah!

I never go granular and try to figure out when the best time is to post to get the most views because… I simply can’t be bothered. I try to remember to spread out my posts a little, except when I forget and just hit publish instead of schedule for later. Oopsy.

Some posts get 20 likes and others get 50. Why? Who knows! Is it because a post is especially “good” that it gets more likes, or has a more eye-catching photo attached? Idk. I’m as surprised as what people like and don’t like here in Blogville as I was back in the murky, scaryland of dating sites.

But, as has been noted many times by me and others, liking often has little to do with the content of a post, amirite? Bloggers power through their feeds when the mood strikes, mass-liking stuff without reading any of it. We can tell, can’t we? It’s only a group of us who regularly read each other’s work, plus some occasional drop-ins.

Monday I wrote a poem on Twitter that now has 42 likes, which is nothing for that place, but a lot for me. Usually my poems there are lucky to get 4-5 likes. Why did that one get 10x more? Who knows?!

Spare Change

Sunday diversion from Rory!

Today’s topic is ………….. Change & The Unexpected

Right now, right this minute what could happen that would change your life totally for the better?

Winning the lottery! 💰

How well do you handle changes in your life, to your life or to your regular routines?

Horribly! 😱

If you could jump into a pool of something odd [not water] what would it be?

Cash! 💵

What would be so much better if you could simply change the colour of it?

The current POTUS should wake up tomorrow as a black man.

If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or visit the future and would you change anything?

Back in time, to summer of 2016. Would not eat the bad sushi or meet the toxic narcissist.

Do you prefer dogs over cats or cats over dogs?

🐱🐱🐱

How would you react if you were unexpectantly changed into a frog?

Starve because I’m not eating flies.

Wite a random sentence about blogging without using the letter G.

The WordPress app irritates me when it skips chunks of posts.

If you could the world over, what would you change?

No parasites.

Why did you do that?

They’re so gross!

If you disinvent something, what would it be and why?

Perfume. Gives me a migraine. Also beeping. Hate beeping!

You have been gifted an elephant – you cannot give it away, donate it or sell it – what are you going to do with your elephant?

Have him stomp on people who annoy me.

What are your values with regards your life?

To each their own.

Who do you prefer to spend the most time with?

My cat.

Which is worse, falling over or not getting back up again?

Falling over.

If the currency was happiness and goodwill, what job would you perform?

Romance novelist.

You have lost your Interney connection for ten days, there is no internet connection within 50 miles of where you live. it matters not about what you use to connect, it simply isn’t happening – what will you for those ten days?

Read lots of books.

Prompts Gone Mad!

These are just for today!

My God.

And every one of them is great, of course. I want to do them all. I realize they don’t all have to be done today, but my own “rain” inspirational thingie is already 4 days old and goes well with blustery fog during the fervent breakup over the kitchen remodel, or whatever.

Ack. Wasting time! Off to search my photos for a colorful square circle…

An Immodest Proposal

Let your writing take center stage! You work hard on your fiction and poetry, so don’t bury it down the screen after posting 27 lines of copypasta text from a prompt host. Why do people do this? Habit?

Stop. 😀

This is the order your fiction or poetry post should take.

1. Title (obviously).

2. Picture.

3. Your original writing (including any linked words going back to a prompt host).

4. A marker showing your piece has ended if you’re going to say something else. Write “The End” or put “***” or similar.

5. If needed, a short phrase linking back to one or more prompt hosts (for example, “Tuesday Monster Prompts”).

That’s it! There’s no reason to copypasta the prompt host’s entire post into your writing. It clutters up your post and takes away from your new work. Why should readers scroll past a huge pile of rules to get to your poem or story? By that time, the mood between the picture and your words has been broken. Even if you post the picture later, why bore your readers with this gobble upfront? Your writing is the star attraction!

If your work has inspired another blogger to try the prompt, great! They can then click through your linked word or phrase to the prompt host and read the rules there, download the pic, and copy the link. Then the host gets a visit. You don’t need to de facto become the new prompt host by reposting everything.

I realize I’m being bossy, but this is actually the right way, so. 🙂👍🏻🎉

Spring Cleaning!

I’ve been periodically unfollowing people this past month. 😱

I have a huge number of blogs in my follow list, and while a vast number are inactive (especially those I followed way back when), my feed is getting unwieldy. Now that I’m doing two prompts, I’d like to focus on certain groups of bloggers. Ooh, rude! I know, I know. But I only have 24 hours in each day and have recently rediscovered the joys of a good night’s sleep. 💤

These are the bloggers I’ll be focusing on:

1. Those who comment here.

2. Those who participate in my prompts.

3. Those who inspire me to write more by posting their own great prompts, poetry, discussions, etc.

If I’ve mistakenly unfollowed you, please speak up. I did hastily unfollow a few folks earlier in the month, but then I saw they were participating, so I refollowed them. Oopsy! 😜

Thanks for understanding. 😀💖👍🏻

Thursday Thoughts

It’s no secret that I’ve been getting tons of writing inspiration from the incredibly talented Teresa of The Haunted Wordsmith. She’s been so generous with her time in contributing wonderful prompts to the WP community. Starting next week, she plans to cut back on some of that however and focus her blog toward more of her own writing, which I look forward to reading.

There are a lot of prompts around, which is great, but I find that I’m most drawn to the ones that inspire me to write poetry. These are usually pictures or words and phrases. I do enjoy writing the occasional flash fiction, particularly fantasy and sci-fi, or humor, but on the whole, I’d rather write more poetry. And, not to be critical, I don’t feel terribly motivated by the handcuff type requirements… I just want to write what the spirit moves me, without regard to any word count or structure. I like my series of 100-word pieces, but I feel I’m done with that phase of writing (note to self: add tab). Every so often, I’m in the mood to do some haiku.

Anyway, my “prompt week” looks like this:

Saturday: Linda’s SOCS
Sunday: Jim’s Song Lyrics
Monday: Laura’s Music Challenge; The Weekly Smile
Tuesday: Fandango’s Provocative Question
Wednesday: Patricia’s “In Other Words;” Linda’s One-Liner
Thursday: ???
Friday: ???

Of course, things pop up randomly in my feed throughout the week from various sources that I may or may not feel like using as motivation. I sometimes answer lists of questions about myself or relate an event. Be that as it may, I’m thinking that Thursday could be be a good day for me to post something to inspire myself to write a poem or flash piece and why not share?

What if I begin a weekly Thursday prompt to motivate myself along with any others who may feel adrift without a creativity nudge? My idea is to post a picture from a free photo library along with a line from a song. People can do whatever they wish with it… poem, flash fiction, combo prompt, nothing, anything. It’s not about me visiting and commenting, though I will try as time allows, but about creative inspiration.

On a semi-related note, I’ve looked up the two names I like to use online and I see they have not been used as hashtags, as far as I can tell. So, I’m going to start using them, here and there, and it’d be cool if people who play along with the prompt do too. It’s pretty meaningless, but whatever.

#lightm0tifs

#p0eticlicense

I’m going to do a test post tonight after this one goes, but unless someone violently objects, starting next Thursday I’ll have the prompts scheduled at 4:00AM Pacific time, same as I have my alphablog posts, which end Tuesday. 🎉

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